About a decade ago, I did a ~4 month road trip up and down the east coast of Australia. We did a handful of multi-night hikes over the course of the trip and spent the balance of our days camping in car campsites (holiday parks). The holiday parks always had a surprising amount of wildlife around them, from snakes and giant spiders to bats and birds and koalas. But two funny food thiefs stand out...

One night camped out somewhere in the Green Mountains/Lamington NP, we were sitting in our chairs behind our car parked on the edge of a large park-like lawn area. It's totally black out and besides the area immediately around us that was lit up by our headlamps and lantern, we couldn't really see much. At some point while eating dinner, we happened to look over our shoulders and see dozens of pairs of little silvery eyes reflecting back at us from all over the field. Oh, just a bunch of cute little wallabies. No big deal, so we kept on eating. Every once in a while we would take another look over our shoulders to see what they were up to. They'd still be out there... Just watching. And waiting. Suddenly, we were ambushed by a couple of them that bounded right through our camp and grabbed parts of our meals right off the plates in our laps before just as quickly vanishing back into darkness. Their raid was a success. They managed to get away with our baked potatoes and corn on the cob!

The other food thief we encountered was in a campground up in Arlie Beach getting ready to hop a ferry out to one of the Whitsunday Islands to camp for a few nights. We were sitting under a patio structure where the camp kitchen and picnic tables were located and eating dinner. A little possum was hanging around and would climb up the posts of the patio cover and scamper along the beams overhead. From this overhead vantage point he could see what everyone around the table was having for dinner and thereby select his next victim. He'd set up just above an unsuspecting camper and hang down off the beam like a monkey. The moment somebody would absentmindedly raise any food item high enough to be within his reach, he'd stretch out there and grab it right out of their hands and then just as quickly climb up out of reach and enjoy his latest plunder. Seemed like this little critter had perfected this act over the years and was by now a first-class food bandit. Getting outsmarted by these little buggers was infuriating!

After writing my story above, I vaguely recalled that my hiking partner snapped a shot of the thief. Found this photo in an old album... a bit fuzzy but maybe his hand was shaking. This event goes back more years than I remember... that's my old Grasshopper stove that the bear was pushing around! Time flies when you are having fun.

Once, on the day after Christmas, I woke up at 2 a.m. to got after the last piece of pie and found my brother, leaning on the kitchen counter, with you know what kind of grin, scarfing it down! Worst kind of scavenger in the world!!

Several years ago I started dating a man who had never been camping before (I have since learned that this is now a deal breaker in relationships, by the way. What guy worth anything hasn't been camping??!!!)

Anyway, I couldn't convince him to try a short backpack trip, so we did a car camping thing at a state park somewhere along the California coast. He was actually quite excited, and spent a lot of money on food. Man food. Bacon. A lot of bacon.

We set up camp and after dinner started putting things away. The two of us struggled to hoist the very large, unwieldy picnic table on top of the cooler to keep it secure from thieving beasts. Er, raccoons. I was actually a bit worried we were going to dent the cooler, but he was quite happy with the set up (his cooler...his bacon...his call).

The next morning we awoke to a glorious sunrise, beautiful weather...and went out to make coffee and, well, bacon. The picnic table was where we left it, but the cooler was gone. We found it down the hill past our campsite, all the contents strewn all the way down the hill...and no bacon.

I was at the end of the trail out of Sunrise in Mount Rainier NP one day- I forget if it was at First Burroughs or Second Burroughs- it was the one with the big stacked stone bench to sit on. I had sat down to have my lunch and had set my drugstore-bought disposable camera beside me. Shortly, the most portly Rock Squirrel I had ever seen waddled over and grabbed the camera! I guess he thought it was edible or something. So here I am, a grown man arguably in the top 1% of most educated people on the planet, chasing a morbidly obese Rock Squirrel across the scree, screaming in a high-pitched girlish squeal for him to give me my camera back. I'm certain that there were a few teenage girls giggling at my ridiculousless that day.

When he paused for breath I seized the free end of the camera, and of course he clamped all four claws onto the rock he was sitting on and refused to let go of his end. We did a tug-of-war for a few seconds, and then the little ba$tard had the cheek to GROWL at me- still with the camera clenched in his incisors, mind you. Seriously- I damned near picked up that rock via the camera and attached growling squirrel.

Eventually, of course, I won, though not uninjured. It was a gargantuan struggle- some day surely epic poetry shall be written about it. When the movie rights are sold I would prefer that I be played by Chris Hemsworth.

Then, predictably, I returned to my pack to discover that his accomplice had made off with my peanut-butter cups...

If there is any justice in the world they have both long since succumbed to coronary artery disease as a sequela of their poor diet.